U.S. Develops its Own Coin Style

A new American style of coin design is taking shape. That sentiment was shared by members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee when they met April 26 in Washington, D.C.

Author:
Debbie Bradley
Publish date:
May 8, 2012

A new American style of coin design is taking shape.

That sentiment was shared by members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee when they met April 26 in Washington, D.C.
The sharp contrast between frosted and mirrored fields as seen on the 911 medal, Star Spangled Banner silver coin dollar and proposed designs for a Girl Scout commemorative silver dollar signal a design trend developing that may suggest a new American style, said CCAC Chairman Gary Marks.

“Latvia and Austria have been producing some interesting designs for years,” Marks said. “They have an interesting style, and that is something I think the committee would agree we haven’t had – a defining American style – in recent time.”
But that is changing.

“We are very pleased with the two designs that we came up with,” Marks said, referring to an obverse design featuring faces of three girls and a reverse design with stylized profiles of three girls represented in the trefoil logo of the Girl Scouts.
Committee members were particularly drawn to the reverse design, Marks said.

“The shaded and lightly shaded areas are the frosted raised elements,” he said. The white area is going to be the mirrored finish and the ‘United States of’ will be incused and mirrored while ‘America’ will be frosted and raised.

“There is going to be some sharp contrast which we think will be very attractive.”

The designs endorsed are complementary, Marks noted, with three girls on the obverse and a stylized trefoil profile of three Girl Scouts on the reverse.

But because they were designed independent of each other, there were some wording changes that needed to be made, he said.
The committee recommended that the words “100 Years of Girl Scouting” on the obverse be changed to “Courage, Confidence, Character” and that the number “100” be placed inside the trefoil.

It proposed replacing “E Pluribus Unum” on the reverse with the words “Girl Scouts” and that “E Pluribus Unum” be placed in smaller type where the “100 Years” currently exists.

The committee also proposed obverse and reverse designs for four congressional gold medals honoring Native American tribes who served the U.S. military as code talkers during World War I and World War II.

Rather than have one common design honoring the 22 tribes who provided code talkers, the CCAC had asked for individual designs honoring the unique qualities of each tribe.

The committee endorsed designs for the Comanche Nation, Kiowa Tribe, Tlingit Tribe and Santee Dakota Sioux Tribe.

Although the CCAC chose reverse No. 2 for the Santee Dakota Sioux medal, the tribe preferred design No. 1.

Marks said the committee recognized that Reverse No. 2 didn’t portray some of the symbolism important to the tribe, so recommended that the Mint consider an arrowhead shield be added to the breast of the eagle, the design of the peace pipe be corrected and that careful consideration be given to the correct number of feathers represented on the eagle.